VintageELLE is a British Lifestyle blog, focussing in on a Twenty Something's passion for all things Travel, Style & Food related. Follow for weekly Life Updates, Travel Diaries or Style Advice!

Friday, 18 January 2013

Beauty Haul & Review: Make-Up Academy.....

Hello lovely readers, hope you are all well.As many of you will probably know/guess, I am always one for a bargain- whether its clothes, food, makeup, furniture, you name it I'm always on the look out for a bargain! So whilst I was out running a few errands the other day, I popped into Superdrug to buy my foundation & had a little browse of the MUA (Makeup Academy) stand. For those who have not come across this brand before I'll just give you a little run down of what it is all about: The whole 'ethos' is to provide "guilt-free makeup to every ladies makeup bag" as well as constantly "creating fantastic products that deliver great value for money".Now I have brought a few things from Makeup Academy before, namely one of their eyeshadow palettes in Heaven & Earth, which I cannot rave enough about, (in fact if you want to see my thoughts on this palette click HERE)as well as various nail polishes. For me I don't feel like I'm breaking the bank when buying any of the products because for the value for money they are cheap & very good quality. I have never tried any of their products based on the face (that rhymes, cringe!) & so I noticed a couple of items that were new & I thought I'd give them ago! Conceal & Brighten Kit- £2.50

The first thing I noticed when applying the concealers was how greasy/slimy the texture was. You know really cheap lip balms/glosses that you get in a tin, that have a really greasy, thin consistency to them? Well, that's kind of what this feels like! But.... as I started to apply the peachier, dark colour of the two to my under eye circles, I actually began to like this product! Not only did it apply very nicely & evenly to my skin, but it concealed the darkness of my circles just as well as my trusty Mac studio concealer. So that was a huge plus, but of course the next hurdle would be how well it would cover up my acne & acne scarring. Now I have always struggled with finding the correct concealer to cover up my acne, firstly because I have very pale skin, every concealer I found (whether it's Rimmel, Maybelline ect)was way too orange for my skin tone. But also they never lasted a long length of time before I had to reapply it again-I'm also talking about when I was a teen. So I wasn't expecting again miracles here because it being such a cheap product, I honestly thought it would be too thin & not long wearing enough. However I was proven very wrong! Again it's the consistency of it that I don't like- it's far too greasy & cheap feeling when applying it to the face, but it covers brilliantly, is very buildable & lasts for a very long time. What I like most about it is the fact it doesn't look like I'm wearing concealer, sometimes cheap products have that cakey, cheap look about them because the sink into the pours leaving your face looking 'blah'- but this blends so well into my skin & luckily does not skin into my pours! It's the perfect colour for my skin as well & definitely is a cheaper alternative for my Mac concealer!

Finally it also comes with a pinky highlighter, which again is in a greasy consistency! But like the concealers, it blends really nicely, adds a healthy glow to my face & doesn't feel greasy on my skin. Overall I really like this palette & is such a bargain for just £2.50 for how good the quality is & for how nice it looks on the skin. Only down side, I don't like how greasy it is on first application, but I can definitely say that it does not look greasy on the skin & the greasiness go after you start blending it into the skin.

Beauty Balm (BB Cream)- £4

On first application of this product, the first thing I noticed was how thick & creamy the texture of the cream was (kind of like oil paint!). I have never tried a BB cream before so have nothing to compare this to, but for me I thought the consistency would be a little runnier, more like a tinted moisturiser & softer on application so that you could build up the coverage & that it did not feel heavy on the skin. So on application it was really difficult to work the the product, mainly because the cream was so thick you had to work really quickly to apply it all over without it drying too quickly & leaving your skin patchy in places.& also because it was so think, it made it extremely difficult to blend into the skin so my face was being pulled everywhere! Now I apply all my foundations with my fingers & then buff it into my skin with my Real Techniques Stippling Brush, so this is what I did when using the BB cream but it ended up leaving my skin really patchy in places. So after applying a second coat I was slightly happier with the finish to it, it did cover ok, definitely not a full coverage product, light to medium I'd say. But of course because it's a BB cream it does not cover any blemishes & hardly any acne scares/discolouration (as it states on the packaging!)

Now I kept on checking my face throughout the day to see how it wore & to be honest I was not very happy! About two hours into wearing it, I started to notice that my skin was already coming very greasy around my nose. I do have combination to oily so I am very much aware that because beauty balms do have moisturising qualities in them, that this could happen. But also what was happening was that even when I touched my face, the product would just come off in my hands leaving areas of my face not covered!So my overall thoughts on the BB cream are not that great- I would definitely not recommend it for anyone with combination/oily skin because it will make you look like a grease ball! & I'm sorry to say teens who are more likely to have oily skin & frequent breakouts, who will be the ones more inclined to buy this product & this brand, I'm sad to say again don't try it! Maybe it's just me, maybe the way I'm applying it is really wrong or it's just my skin type but I just feel like my face ends up looking like a greasy mess when wearing it!! I'm not going to give up though & will give this product a go again soon!